


If You’ve Got an Impulse (Let it Out)

by wvrlyearp



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Brief mentions of implied homophobia, F/F, also erin punches a bunch of people, concretely bisexual erin gilbert, is also a thing, non-graphic casual violence, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wvrlyearp/pseuds/wvrlyearp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like Nine Times Erin Gilbert Does Not Back Down From a Fight and the Zero Times She Does</p>
<p>alternate title for this piece: "Erin Gilbert Likes to Punch People"... but occasionally it helps her get the girl</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You’ve Got an Impulse (Let it Out)

 

Erin is 6 years old the first time she gets in a fight. She’s in first grade and a boy 6 inches taller and one grade older than her steps on her untied shoelace and sends her flying into the gravel and laughs at her. She can feel the tears welling up behind her eyelids as she looks down and sees blood seeping from her palms where they’d skidded against the ground. She’s hurt and she doesn’t understand why he tripped her, but most of all she’s  _ angry _ . She sniffles and wipes the tears from her eyes and stands up and whirls around to face the bully, ready to tell him off and walk away. 

But then he calls her a crybaby. Right to her face, after tripping her and making her bleed, he insults her. And she doesn’t really know what she’s doing, she only registers it when her fist is arcing clumsily through the air that she’s about to punch him. She hits him squarely in the jaw, too short to reach anything higher, and the feeling of her fist making contact is almost satisfying enough to combat the stinging in her scraped knees. So maybe it’s a little bit of overkill when she says

“Who’s the crybaby now?” As the boy’s eyes fill with tears at the surprise of being hit. And so maybe she deserves it when he pushes her down on the ground again and when they both get sent to the principal and when she has to write the boy, who’s name is Stephen, a stupid apology letter and when her parents get called and when she gets yelled at when she gets home. 

But he had  _ started _ it. 

Erin doesn’t hit someone again until after everybody’s found out that she’s being haunted. She had told one person at school, someone who she had considered maybe a friend, and she had laughed in her face and called her crazy and told  _ everyone _ . Nobody would talk to her and she was tired and scared and sad and so when someone tripped her on the playground and called her  _ ghost girl _ , she hadn’t hesitated this time before picking herself back up and letting her fist smash into his nose. It had hurt her hand and he was bigger than her and just like her last fight she had ended up on the ground, but the blood pouring from his nose felt like a victory even when her skinned knees and bruised knuckle and the dirty seat of her pants and the smarting pain in her lower spine where it had connected with the asphalt seemed to signify a loss. 

As she sat in the principal’s office waiting while another call to her parents was made, she couldn’t help but think back on the taunting insult.  _ Ghost girl ghost girl ghost girl.  _ She digs her thumb nail into the back of her pinky as she balls her hand in a fist, ready to hit somebody again if they ever call her names. 

When she explains that night to her parents why she had hit the boy and how he had made fun of her for seeing a ghost, they send her to therapy where she’s questioned about her ghost and about “having aggression issues” and about her home life and where she’s told she should try to make friends at school and about creative outlets for her anger and about how ghosts aren’t real. 

Except ghosts are real, and she doesn’t have aggression issues. She just doesn’t like to get made fun of. 

She nods politely and takes the list of things to do instead of hitting people and balls her hand into a fist under the table.

But it turns out she can’t hit everybody who calls her “Ghost Girl” or who pushes her on the playground partially because she’s been threatened with suspension and partially because she can’t hit everybody in the whole grade at once. She only has two hands. 

And she can’t hit the ghost at the end of her bed because her hands just go straight through and it just makes her even angrier. 

So Erin Gilbert takes a break from hitting people, for the most part. 

She doesn’t get in another fight for years. Although the urge to hit somebody does occasionally overwhelm her senses, she usually manages to turn away and do one of the breathing exercises that she had learned in therapy so that maybe people will think she’s normal again. 

It’s junior year the next time Erin hits somebody. He’s some dumb jock, Chad or Jake or some other monosyllabic name, she’s not sure. He calls her that dumb nickname and he shoves her into the lockers and  _ god it’s only the second day of school _ and she can’t take this anymore. She thought maybe people would have let it go by now, but in a small town like this people never let things go, apparently. She feels that old urge bubbling up inside of her again and she feels herself make a fist and yeah, screw it, she swings it brutally into his face. 

Instead of pushing her again he hits her back, squarely in the left eye, before calling her a freak and sauntering away laughing. She doesn’t feel victorious this time, just angry and hurt and sad. She leans back against the lockers as everybody else files to class, trying to blink back tears. She shuts her eyes for a moment to collect herself and when she opens them there’s somebody in front of her, a girl with long dark hair and glasses a few inches shorter than herself is giving her a quizzical and almost calculating look. She recoils, almost afraid that she’s going to be hit again. 

“That’s gonna bruise,” the girl says, pointing to her eye. Erin frowns. 

“Yeah, probably.”

The girl in front of her smiles and sticks out a hand in greeting. 

“I’m Abby Yates,” She says, pausing as she waits for a name in return. Erin shakes her hand almost tentatively, wincing slightly at the pain in her own hand from punching that guy in the face. 

“Erin Gilbert,” she says, withdrawing her hand and shaking it out slightly, trying to ignore the burning in her knuckles. 

“You know, you’re supposed to punch with your thumb outside your fist,” Abby muses, leaning up against the lockers next to Erin. They’re both late to class, probably, but Erin hasn’t had anyone at school hold a civil conversation with her for years. In fact, the previous year she had returned to school to find out that over the summer the entire grade had conspired to not speak to her, so maybe being punched in the eye was a step up. Erin nods, filing away the advice for another time before tenderly using one hand to feel around her eye. It’s tender and possibly a little swollen and she groans out loud. 

“How bad does it look?” 

Abby stands on her tiptoes to be eye level with Erin and inspects her carefully. 

“Honestly?” She asks, resting back on the balls of her feet and reassuming her normal height. Erin nods. “It looks pretty terrible,” Abby says, clapping a hand securely on Erin’s shoulder as she groans again, thinking about just how much her parents are gonna kill her when she gets home. 

“Kind of badass though!” Abby adds,  smiling widely at Erin, who returns the smile quickly. They part to go to class and Abby tells Erin that maybe she’ll “catch her later” and even through the pain in her knuckles and her eye, it feels sort of like victory again. 

It turns out Abby is in her chemistry class and they become fast friends, bonding over a shared love for science and math and how other kids have never liked them because of that. Erin, of course, doesn’t mention that the other kids don’t like her because she sees ghosts because she doesn’t want to jeopardize what could be the first real friendship she’s ever had. That is, until Abby asks about it. 

They’re sitting on her bed one day going over some notes when Abby suddenly asks if she can ask her something. Erin knows her anxiety is getting the better of her when she feels her heart speed up at the question and feels her palms get sweaty. She’s pretty sure she stutters when she answers with an attemptedly flippant

“Sure, anything.”

Abby takes a deep breath, plucking at a thread on Erin’s bedspread. 

“That guy you punched. He called you something, what was it?” 

Erin visibly tenses at that, ready to tell Abby that it was nothing, that he called her a bitch or a loser or something, but something in the way Abby’s looking at her tells her she already knows what he said and that she won’t take it very well if Erin lies to her, so she tells the truth, ready for Abby to storm off and never speak to her again. 

“He called me ‘Ghost Girl’,” she says, staring at her hands which are folded over each other in her lap. 

“Because…?” Abby prompts, nudging Erin’s leg with her knee in encouragement. 

“BecauseIwashauntedbyaghost,” Erin blurts out quickly, admitting it for the first time in years. She had eventually even told her therapist that she had made the whole thing up for attention since he obviously didn’t believe her saying that it was real. 

“What was that?” Abby says, leaning in closer to Erin with wide eyes. Erin shrugs her shoulders and keeps her eyes trained down. 

“I got haunted by the ghost of my mean old neighbor after she died, okay? Is that what you came here for? To hear about what a  _ freak _ I am, huh? Are you gonna call me ‘ghost girl’ too?” Erin replies, feeling tears well up in her eyes. She doesn’t really notice what’s happening as Abby wraps her in a tight hug and she realizes she hasn’t been hugged in a very long time and she cries as Abby holds her and tells her that she’s not a freak and even more, that she  _ believes _ her. Nobody had ever believed her before. The next day Abby comes to class with her backpack stuffed full of books and magazine articles about the science behind the paranormal. They stay up all night reading them and taking careful notes and eating pizza, and finally,  _ finally _ , Erin Gilbert has a friend. 

From then on, Abby has her back. Abby has her back when she hits somebody else the next year for calling her names again and Abby has her back when she gets her nose almost broken in a scuffle in a bar in college and Abby has her back when she hits somebody at a party for shouting slurs at her and her then-girlfriend and Abby has her back when she hits some guy who makes fun of her for using her physics degree to study ghosts. Erin always punches with her thumb outside her fist just like Abby taught her and Abby is always ready to give Erin an icepack and remind her gently that she’s really not supposed to hit people in the face. And even though Erin loses 100% of the fights she starts, she always feels a certain energy afterwards that makes her fists itch the next time somebody insults her. 

After she and Abby stop talking, she stops getting in fights. Partially because there’s nobody to back her up anymore and partially because she knows that if she’s going to have the real career she had betrayed Abby for she’s going to need to start acting more refined and more like a grownup. Besides, when she’s doing real work and not wasting her time studying the paranormal, there seems to be a lot less for people to mock her for. She goes on a few dates, with men mostly, and tries to fabricate a past that she can tell them that doesn’t revolve around her studying ghosts for the better part of ten years. But it feels fake and forced and unnatural, and there’s only so much she can talk about her past while trying not to mention Abby before she feels sick to her stomach and wants to go home and cry. She doesn’t go on many second dates, and almost never on a third. Nothing feels right without her best friend there to talk to, to confide in, to share ideas with. It’s like being in middle school all over again. 

She’s almost glad to have an excuse to go track down Abby and talk to her again, even if she thinks things will never be like they used to. Abby is angry at her, rightfully so, but between all the excitement of seeing their first ghost together and her getting subsequently fired from her job and becoming a full time explorer of the paranormal, things somehow seem to slip back into their old cadence. Almost.

Because then there’s Holtzmann. Holtzmann who overtly flirts both with Erin and with danger, who’s a little loud and a little rude and ten kinds of crazy. Of course, Erin falls for her almost instantly. She can tell Abby knows from the strange little looks she shoots her every time Erin feels herself staring at Holtz for a moment too long, but Erin really can’t do anything about it. Try as she might, she can’t stop herself from feeling like there’s some sort of electric energy between her and Holtz, something kind of like the acrid smell right before lightning strikes. Inevitable and powerful and probably destructive, but bound to happen. 

She’s more than glad when Patty comes along and becomes the fourth member of their team and the dynamic has to readjust itself again. Between her lingering tension with Abby and her mounting tension with Holtz, she was sure something was about to snap soon, but Patty serves to calm everyone down, somehow. Her energy makes them a team, rather than just Holtz and Abby and Abby and Erin and that escalating  _ something _ between her and Holtz. Which it turns out there’s no time to explore, because the world might be ending and there are ghosts to bust. 

Of course, now that Abby’s back and normal has flown out the window, it’s only a matter of time before Erin ends up hitting somebody again. It’s after their first successful bust at the concert, and she wants to chalk the whole thing up to a spike in adrenaline and maybe as some sort of “old habits die hard” sort of thing, but she knows it’s not just that. She feels satisfied as she throws her fist directly into the nose of the asshole who tells her that she’s crazy, that she should go back to therapy and he goes down like a ton of bricks. Abby, for her part, tries to stop her (if albeit a little half heartedly), but she knows Erin well enough to know that when she wants a fight she’s going to have one. As soon as she hits the guy she regrets it and whirls around to see the shocked looks on the faces of the surrounding crowd and two of the members of her team. Abby stands there with a look more along the lines of “not again” as everyone else goes silent. Erin swallows and tries to subtly shake out her hand. 

“Let’s go,” she says quickly and quietly, turning on her heel to hightail it towards the Ecto-1. She hopes that the guy is too embarrassed to press charges and that nobody will cover her outburst in any major news outlets, but she sorely doubts her luck. Nobody brings it up until they’re sitting around their table in the lab later that night eating dinner. Holtzmann’s giving her this look that’s all eyebrows and closed mouth smile with her head resting on her chin when she asks casually

“So, was that the first time you’d hit a guy?”

Abby laughs out loud at that, spitting her drink all over the table. Patty gives her a quizzical look before turning to Erin. 

“Gilbert, really?” She says, sounding somewhere between impressed and horrified. Erin opens her mouth to speak but is cut off when Abby finishes cackling and answers for her. 

“Are you kidding?” Abby asks, jabbing a thumb towards Erin “She hit a guy right before the first time we met!” She exclaims, earning a laugh from Patty and another eyebrow raise from Holtz. Erin rolls her eyes as Abby starts off listing all the times that Erin has punched people in front of her as she feels her face grow redder and redder. Abby launches into another story and Erin feels her chest go tight. 

“And then there was this one time we were at this party with Erin’s  _ girlfriend _ and-” Erin inhales sharply as she watches Holtz’s mouth drop open. Abby goes to continue with the story but is cut off by Holtz giving Erin a calculating look and pointing to her across the table. 

“Wait,  _ girlfriend! _ ” Holtz exclaims excitedly, “Erin, you never told me you were part of the club!” Holtzmann continues, and Erin’s sure that the color on her cheeks is reaching something near scarlet. Erin shrugs and Holtz let’s her hand drop to the table. 

“Dr. Erin Gilbert,” Holtzmann muses, “Badass, physicist, and homosexual.” She says with a little shake of her head. 

“ _ Bi _ sexual, technically.” Erin pipes up with a little cock of her head, making direct eye contact with Holtz. She feels that electric spark of energy again before she draws her eyes back to Abby, who’s suddenly prattling on with the story with a wave of her hand. She can still feel Holtz’s eyes trained on her as Abby rattles off a few more stories about Erin “itchy fists” Gilbert before she finally runs out of things to tell. Everyone’s giving her this sort of shocked look still and Erin shrugs, 

“What, like none of you have ever punched anybody?” 

Holtz answers first, with a loud  “Nope” and a grin as she continues to stare at Erin, who almost wants to flinch away. 

“Nuh-uh not me man,” Patty says proudly, “I don’t believe that violence is ever the answer.” 

Abby doesn’t have to say anything for everyone to know that Erin was always first to defend her honor before she had to do it herself. There’s quiet for a moment before Patty speaks again. 

“But you really don’t know when to pick your battles, do you Erin?” She asks, drawing Erin’s eye contact away from where it had flitted back to Holtz. Erin shakes her head, letting her eyes glance back to Holtz once more. 

“No,” she says, “I really don’t.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, things get crazy again and before she knows it she’s beating up ghosts and causing explosions and jumping into portals. But hey, she had never claimed to have good impulse control. 

After that things fall into an almost normal routine. They move into the firehouse and start going on more regular busts for real money. When they’re not out busting ghosts she’s usually working out equations or reading scientific journals in her sequestered section of Holtz’s lab. She learns the quickest route to the fire extinguisher and all the words to  _ Everybody Wants to Rule the World _ fairly quickly, but it’s a slower process trying to figure out exactly what it is that Holtz wants from her. The relentless flirting is near constant. Even when it’s just simple things like Holtz casually calling Erin “babe” or holding eye contact with her for a second more than is absolutely necessary, Erin always finds herself reeling over it, pouring over the intricacies of the moment in some attempt to decode Holtz’s intentions. 

Her answer, ironically, comes the next time she ends up hitting somebody. Both she and Holtz have a nasty habit of staying in the lab way later than is socially acceptable, often forgoing basic needs like food and sleep in sacrifice for what they assume is the greater good. Erin has been pouring over the same equation for hours and she feels a muscle in her eyebrow begin to twitch as she stares and stares and stares. She can’t figure out where she went wrong, but she knows it’s somewhere. Suddenly she feels a tap on her shoulder and nearly jumps out of her skin as she turns around to see Holtz standing behind her with a soft look on her face. 

“Come on Gilbert, you need a snack.” Holtz says, extending a hand to help pull Erin out of her chair. The firehouse, unfortunately, is completely devoid of food, so Holtzmann decides they should venture down the street to the corner store to stock up. Erin almost protests, almost says she better just head to bed, that she can eat in the morning. But there’s something persistent in Holtz’s eyes that says she won’t let Erin go to bed on stomach filled exclusively with coffee so she relents, quickly shrugging on her jacket and patting her pockets to make sure she has her keys. 

They’re halfway down the street when it happens. Erin sees somebody walking towards them but thinks nothing of it as Holtz animatedly tells her about a new idea she has for what essentially sounds like a super powerful hairdryer to Erin. But the figure gets closer and seems to be walking straight towards them, and Erin almost panics before he seems to change course.

Just as it seems like he’s going to pass by Holtz’s side on the right, he steps towards her slightly and jostles her aggressively, muttering something under his breath. Erin doesn’t quite catch what he says at first, but as her brain registers what he says she feels anger bubble inside of her. Holtz seems almost unfazed, turning her head slightly to watch the guy go and rubbing at her shoulder. Erin isn’t so quick to forget. 

“Hey, asshole!” She calls out, catching the guy’s attention and forcing him to turn around. Holtz pulls at Erin’s sleeve, muttering under her breath. 

“Come on Erin. It’s  _ fine _ , let it go.”

Erin turns her head to Holtz with her eyebrows knitted. 

“It’s not  _ fine _ , Holtz! He called you a-” Holtz cuts her off again as the man saunters back towards them, pulling her sleeve again. 

“I know what he called me, Erin. Let’s just go.” 

Except it’s kind of too late for that. The guy who had shoved Holtz is face to face with Erin now, anger evident in his pig-like eyes. He gets far too close to her face before answering her earlier call. 

“Yeah?” He says, making the word sound like a threat. Holtz steps back as Erin steps forward, getting in his personal space.

“Watch where you’re going.” She says coolly, turning around and starting to walk away before whirling around and swinging her fist. She knows she’s surprised the guy as she smashes her hand into his face, but he doesn’t hesitate for long before returning the blow. Erin finds herself reeling as her hands fly to her face as the asshole turns around and takes off at full speed. She feels blood pooling in her cupped hands and swears softly. Suddenly Holtz is next to her, prying her hands from her face .

“Jesus, Erin!” she exclaims, quickly assessing the situation and taking a deep breath. 

“I’m fine, really.” Erin mumbles through her hands, which she has clasped in front of her nose again. Holtz sighs. 

“You’re not fine, come on, let’s go get you cleaned up.” She says, taking Erin’s elbow and leading her back to the firehouse. It’s not like she doesn’t know the way, but it’s nice to have a reminder of Holtz’s presence as they walk back. 

Once inside Holtz sits Erin in the kitchen and runs off to go get tissues with a quick command to “Not get blood on everything”. 

Despite Erin’s insistence that she can hold the tissue to her nose herself, Holtz insists on helping her anyway, holding tissue after tissue to her face until the bleeding finally stanches and tutting quietly at the bruising on Erin’s face. 

“You know you didn’t have to do that, right?” Holtz says with a small smile as she wipes that last of the blood from Erin’s face. Erin nods apologetically. 

“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

Holtz cuts her off with a quiet laugh. “All I said is you didn’t have to, no need to be sorry.” Holtz remarks, still sitting almost uncomfortably close to Erin’s face. That electricity between them is sparking dangerously in the silence that precedes Holtz’s next comment. 

“Actually, it was kinda hot,” Holtz says with a smirk. 

And Erin surges forward and kisses her, poor impulse control be damned. Her nose is smarting as her face collides with Holtz’s but it’s worth it. The way they kiss is exactly the way Erin had imagined, electric. Holtz’s hand slides up to tangle in her hair and pulls her infinitely closer and she kisses her until she can’t breathe. They pull apart at exactly the same time and breathe with their foreheads pressed close together. Erin can see a smile on Holtz’s face that rivals her own. 

Maybe she walked away with the only bloody nose from that particular fight, but she was  _ definitely _  victorious nonetheless. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you thought! Come shout about Holtzbert with me on tumblr @wvrlyearp and/or send prompts!! Hope you enjoyed!!


End file.
